Untitled
by inkanei
Summary: This was a pinch-hit for Trek Exchange. Basic prompt: The normal bridge crew is taken out/incapacitated in battle and Dr. McCoy has to take command of the ship and care for the injured at the same time.


A/N: This was a pinch-hit for Trek Exchange (LJ)for the following prompt by kcscribbler:  
_4. A major accident on the Bridge during a fight, and with Scotty in Engineering and Sulu and Uhura (as well as Spock and Kirk) unconscious or whatever, McCoy has to for the moment take command as well as care for the injured superior officers at the same time._

They've been patrolling the neutral zone the last week, looking for a Klingon ship that is rumored to be cloaked somewhere along the border. Though how they're supposed to find a cloaked ship, McCoy has no idea. At the moment, he's making his way to the bridge to remind the Captain that his physical has come due, because apparently, comm messages are too easy to ignore. McCoy enters the lift, thinking smugly that a doctor in his face will be a lot harder for Jim to ignore.

When the red-alert klaxon starts sounding, McCoy isn't too concerned. He's learned that they tend to go to red-alert a lot this close to the neutral zone. Keeps everyone on their toes, Jim says. However, when the whole ship shudders hard enough that McCoy's nearly thrown off his feet, his stomach drops. Luckily, he's practically at the bridge already, so when the lift suddenly stops between floors, and McCoy hits the override button to open the door, he finds himself only slightly below the deck. He reaches up and pulls himself out of the lift, and onto the bridge floor.

That's when he sees the chaos.

"Doctor!" Uhura yells from her console. She looks frantic, hair eschew as she splits her attention between whatever she's doing at her station, and the bodies on the floor near the captain's chair.

Then McCoy sees the rest of the room.

Consoles are sparking and smoking. Sulu is slumped over his station, apparently unconscious. Chekov looks dazed, staring down at his console with blood running down the side of his face. Spock and Jim… the Captain and First Officer are on the floor in the center of the room, as if they'd been conferring there right before they'd been hit.

The Captain and the First Officer, McCoy thinks, running over to their prone forms. He can't think of them as Jim and Spock if he's going to be able to do his job.

Spock's out cold, but his breathing and pulse are steady. McCoy curses himself for leaving his tricorder and medkit down in medical. He can't see any visible injuries, but that doesn't rule out internal ones. He turns to Jim, who's half under his chair, and twisted in a way that looks dangerous. His breathing is a bit shallow, and his pulse isn't as strong as the doctor would like, but at least he's alive. Unfortunately, without a tricorder or a stretcher, McCoy doesn't want to move him and risk further injury. From the way he's twisted, he could have a spinal injury.

"McCoy! For God's sake!" He glances up in surprise at Uhura. From the look on her face it's clear that she's been trying to get his attention for a while now. "The warship! We need to do something!"

That's when he notices that they're still, in fact, under attack.

He glances around the bridge in desperation, keeping one hand on Kirk. "Chekov!" he screams to be heard above the alarms. "Chekov, can you drive this thing?" From the blank look Chekov sends him, it's clear that his head injury is serious.

Well, shit.

McCoy gets up and leans over Sulu's console. He's taken a couple rudimentary piloting courses, but nothing that involved combat flying, or evasive maneuvers. He taps the comm. "McCoy to Scott." As soon as he hears the acknowledgement he continues, "Scotty, do we still have warp?"

"Aye, Doc. Not top speed, but we can do a hell of a lot better than thrusters!"

McCoy nods to himself. "Get us ready for warp, then, Mr. Scotty. We're gonna get our asses out of here in a second."

"Doctor, we can't just warp away. They'll fire on us as we go into warp. We'll take too much damage before we can get far enough away!" Uhura yells.

"I know," he replies. "Can we hail them?"

Uhura looks at him as if he's lost his mind. "You want to ask for permission to run away?"

"Something like that," he answers, returning to check on the Captain again. His vitals aren't improving.

"We're hailing them," Uhura calls, and McCoy can hear the doubt in her voice.

"Great. Let me know when they look like they're gonna respond," McCoy answers, still bent over Kirk. The Captain's vitals are still steadily dropping, and he knows that if Jim doesn't get help soon, he'll die in the middle of his own bridge.

"They're responding," Uhura yells back after a few seconds. "They're opening a channel."

McCoy quickly returns to Sulu's station, and inputting coordinates that he knows are vaguely anywhere-but-here, he throws the ship into warp. The stars blur as the ship rockets away, and other than one last minor jolt, it seems clear that they've escaped without further damage.

"Uhura, do you know how to turn the damn siren off?"

Immediately the alarms stop, and the bridge falls into an unnatural quiet.

-------------

Later in sick bay, McCoy's in his office when Jim starts to come around. He can hear Spock's voice quietly beginning to answer his questions and assure him that the ship is still in once piece. McCoy starts in that direction, wanting to check Jim over again before he gets any ideas about running off to help the repair crews, but as he gets closer, he catches his name and pauses to listen.

"…apparently he hailed the Klingons in a ruse to get them to drop their guard long enough to allow our escape. Once they opened a channel, he took us to warp."

McCoy hears a sleepy half-snort. "Bones took us to warp? Lucky we didn't end up in the middle of the Empire."

"I heard that," the doctor finally says, stepping closer. He runs his tricorder over the Captain while pretending to frown in deep concern. "Looks like it didn't work," he finally says.

Kirk looks at him warily. "What?"

McCoy pretends to further check his readouts. "You're still a pain in the ass." He intones. "Guess there are some things modern medicine still can't fix."


End file.
